I am up in the middle of the night, or is it early morning--it's 3:10, you decide. Too much of my own snoring, too much of my husband's restlessness, too much going on in my mind. I'm drinking chamomile tea, hoping to calm body and mind and steal a couple more hours of sleep, but first the brain must be emptied.
Today is the private inurnment. It's going to be the second goodbye. The first was on May 22 in Mom's bedroom. The third will be June 25th at the memorial service. And then there will be all the other goodbyes. The smallest things get to me--the latest ones have been commercials on television for Ensure and Twizzlers, two of the things I used to buy for Mom. I'm afraid this inurnment will "get to me", too. I've never done this. Dad's ashes were put in the niche and there was no ceremony at the cemetery. I scattered my brother's ashes in the Elwah River 3 years after he died. There will only be the three of us, my younger brother, my husband and me, at the cemetery today.
I asked the funeral people to give my brother and me some of the ashes, my brother's to go into a heart shaped container and mine just in a little bag. My cousin called the other day. He told me he'd buried his mother's ashes between her mother and father in a local cemetery. I'll put my portion of Mom's ashes there, too, next to her beloved sister and her mother and father. I'd rather visit Mom in that cemetery than visit "the wall" at the other one. I'll go to the Wall on Memorial Days with my little sprig of flowers, like I've been doing since Dad died 10 years ago. But I'll visit Mom on beautiful Spring days, like the day she died, with the birds singing loudly and the smell of lilacs in the air.
After the inurnment the three of us will come home and put the funeral home lasagna in the oven and we'll make a toast to Mom. Maybe we'll even be able to muster the good cheer necessary to tell stories. We'll have a tiny wake. Too bad we can't have alcohol at the memorial service later this month because I'd sure like to hoist a couple to Mom and sing some songs with all my old friends on that day.
2 comments:
I promise to drink with you after the service back at the house.
We will be bringing Kay and Alan and Marc, if he wants to come and anyone else we feel like partying/waking with. We'll have a good time. And there will be a lot of food left over. The Tracyton church may not be very responsive when someone is sick, but they put out a good spread at a Memorial Service and the family gets all the leftovers.
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